by Merry Farmer
Marie fought down a surge of irritation and picked at the forest green skirt she wore. “Thank you, my lady, but my hope is that this old gown is sufficient for mourning a fiancé I barely knew.”
Lady Aoife’s pale face splashed with pink, and she looked away.
Marie didn’t try to hide her wince. “I’m sorry, Lady Aoife. I didn’t mean to snap.” She reached for Lady Aoife’s hand to squeeze it. “I know that your condolences are genuine. And you are right. I should don proper mourning attire because of my connection to the family.”
Lady Aoife seemed to forgive her. She lifted her face timidly to Marie and smiled. “It’s just that I feel responsible,” she said in a whisper.
Marie wanted to smirk at the word. “Responsible” was becoming a theme she couldn’t escape.
The others fell into a conversation about the rain, which gave Marie a chance to speak to Lady Aoife in relative privacy.
“Responsible?” Marie asked. Part of her hoped to draw the woman out. She couldn’t forget what she’d seen by the springhouse the day before.
“Because I’m…I’m to be the Countess of Kilrea soon,” Lady Aoife said, lowering her head and looking as miserable as if her fiancé was the one who had died.
Marie’s heart thrummed with paradoxical excitement. “And this isn’t something you want?” she asked cautiously. If she could get Lady Aoife to admit she was in love with Lord Garvagh, there was a chance she could have Christian—or even Lord Boleran—call the engagement off.
“What I want isn’t important,” Lady Aoife said, glancing wistfully toward one of the parlor’s rain-streaked windows.
A thrill of triumph shot through Marie’s gut. Lady Aoife obviously didn’t want to marry Christian. Discovering that was the first step toward untangling the rest of the mess.
“I would think that your feelings on matters of love are highly important.” Marie still held the woman’s hand. She patted it, then clasped it in both of hers, showing as much warmth and friendship as she could.
“Marriage and love do not always go hand in hand,” Lady Aoife said, dragging her eyes reluctantly back to Marie.
“But they should.” Marie stared intently at her. She had to wring an admission from the woman, but she had to do it delicately. “You don’t love Lord Kilrea.” She phrased her question as a statement, hoping it would be easier for Lady Aoife to admit to it that way.
“I’m certain I will grow to love him in time,” Lady Aoife said.
Marie took a deep breath to battle her frustration with the woman’s answers. “He is a lovely man,” she said slowly. “But perhaps not the loveliest of your acquaintance?”
A sudden, guilty look drew all color out of Lady Aoife’s face. “Whether I find any man lovelier than the man I have been told I am to marry is irrelevant,” she said, barely audible.
“But there is someone?” Marie practically vibrated with impatience. Why could the woman not just own up to her true feelings and take what she wanted?
Because women had been schooled for centuries to do as they were told and accept every sort of meddling in their lives, she answered herself. Because up until very recently, a woman’s feelings weren’t considered important at all, particularly not where marriage was concerned. Marie was beyond grateful that the mindset which had given birth to those horrible ideas was changing, even if it wasn’t changing fast enough.
“I will do as my brother tells me,” Lady Aoife said, evidently not willing to stand up for herself like a modern woman.
Frustration had Marie ready to leap out of her skin. How were women ever supposed to rise up to take their rightful place in the world when so many continued to see themselves as unworthy of something as simple as demanding to marry whomever they pleased?
“You’ll do as your brother says, even if it means you’ll be unhappy?” Marie asked subtly. She leaned closer to Lady Aoife. “Even if that means some other, worthier gentleman will be made unhappy by the decision as well?”
The look Lady Aoife gave her in response to the suggestion reminded Marie of a rabbit that had been cornered by a fox and knew it was about to be devoured. “I…I cannot imagine what you mean by that, Lady Marie,” she stammered.
The other conversation in the room stumbled to a halt, and all eyes turned to Marie and Lady Aoife. Which was no surprise to Marie. Lady Aoife looked as guilty as sin and ready to burst into tears.
“Aoife, are you well?” Lord Boleran asked, standing and putting aside the teacup he’d been holding. “Perhaps we should return home so that you can rest. My sister has a delicate constitution,” he said to Shannon by way of apology.
“Anyone who is forced to endure your presence on a daily basis would have a delicate constitution,” Colleen muttered, tilting her nose up.
Marie sent Colleen a scathing look and stood as Lady Aoife did. “If there is anything I can do to help you in any way, my lady,” she said. “If you ever need a friend to confide in, someone who might have been a sister to you.”
Lady Aoife smiled weakly at her, but rushed away as soon as her brother swept her from the room.
The next few minutes were spent bidding farewell to the guests. Marie bristled with frustration, even as she smiled and curtsied and pretended nothing was wrong. The moment Lady Aoife and Lord Boleran were gone, though, her sisters rounded on her.
“Whatever did you say to make Lady Aoife blanche so?” Chloe asked, as though she were asking Marie for the plot twist in the novel she was reading.
“She looked terrified enough to faint,” Shannon said with a far more pointed stare.
Marie returned to the sofa, flopping into it. “Everything is a muddle,” she said as her sisters sat around her.
“What sort of a muddle?” Colleen asked.
“A matrimonial muddle.” Marie sighed, then sat straighter. “Christian believes he’s still obligated to marry Lady Aoife, because it was his father’s last wish for him, even though he’s in love with me.”
“Oh,” Chloe said with a rapturous smile. “Did he confess that love for you? Was it glorious and romantic?”
“He did not confess it in so many words,” Marie said, feeling as though she’d missed out on what was her due, “but it’s true. And Lady Aoife still feels obligated to marry him, even though she’s in love with someone else as well.”
At that revelation, both Chloe and Colleen gasped.
“Who is Lady Aoife in love with?” Colleen asked.
“Lord Garvagh,” Marie said. “I spotted the two of them in an intimate conversation yesterday while on my way to call on Christian.” She tilted her head to the side, remembering the way Lady Aoife had looked as though she were in tears. “I think she’s as miserable about being forced to marry Christian as Christian is over what he thinks is his part in the accident.”
“But he didn’t cause the accident,” Colleen said. “Benedict might be a complete arse, but he knows of what he speaks when it comes to carriage wreckage.”
Marie, Shannon, and Chloe all turned to Colleen, and all three of them managed to ask in unison, “Benedict?”
Colleen’s face flushed puce. “Lord Boleran.” She cleared her throat. After a split-second of guilt, she burst into anger. “Oh, never you mind. You have your secrets and I have mine. But before you chastise me, I hate the man, and nothing half as wicked as what Marie and Lord Kilrea did has happened between the two of us.”
“But you wish it would,” Chloe said, then dissolved into giggling snorts.
The sisterly exchange was enough to send bursts of light through Marie’s whole body. Everything had changed, and yet some things would always remain the same. Her sisters were a steady force that she could always rely on. They were bold, brave, and powerful when it came to determining their own futures.
She would be bold and brave too.
“I am not going to sit idly by and let four people’s lives be ruined by this foolish marriage,” she said, standing. “Lady Aoife is in love with Lord Garvagh. I am i
n love with Christian. If it’s the last thing I do, I am going to see that the right people marry each other, even if I have to break a hundred carriages to do so.”
“Perhaps that isn’t the right analogy for the time,” Shannon said in a scolding voice.
Marie’s cheeks heated. “Perhaps not, but my intention is the same. I am going to make things right, and I am going to start by convincing Christian that he deserves just as much love as any other man and all the happiness life can provide him.”
Chapter 10
Unlike a large number of men of his acquaintance, Christian had never shied away from emotions, even intense ones. But as he sat beside his mother’s bed, brushing her face lightly with a damp cloth to clean away the last traces of the broth the nurse had fed her for supper, he wondered if men who eschewed emotion had the right idea after all. His heart twisted in his chest at the sight of his proud, strong mother looking so frail. Her dark hair was streaked with grey and fanned out over the pillow, and her skin was pale and papery as she slumbered on. There had been a few encouraging signs that day, moments when it had almost seemed like she would awaken, but they’d come to naught.
The ache he felt at seeing how old and helpless his mother had become was nothing to the half dozen or more kinds of guilt he felt, though. The days-old guilt that lashed him over his part in the accident still throbbed deep in his chest, but newer, sharper forms of shame skated over top of that now. He shouldn’t have shouted at Marie that morning. She was only trying to help him. He’d been too consumed with grief to allow that the world around him was still moving and happiness still existed. He felt guilty for experiencing a moment or two of that happiness. Being close to Marie had warmed parts of him that had frozen over. He felt horrible for wanting more of that, wanting her. Which made him miserable, because he still believed he had a duty to marry Lady Aoife. Except, he now questioned whether he really had that duty or if it was just an echo of the way his father had always lashed out at him for being a terrible son. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life haunted by his father’s ghost, but a large part of him still craved the man’s approval.
“I don’t know what to do, Mama,” he whispered, putting the damp cloth aside and taking his mother’s thin hand in both of his. “I just want to do the right thing, but it’s become so muddled. I don’t know what the right thing is anymore.”
No answer came from his mother’s prone form, but somehow Christian knew that his mother was full of advice, and that she wanted nothing more than to be able to give it to him. He longed painfully for the moment when he could hold his mother in his arms and the two of them could weep together over the loss of the other half of their family. Even if his father and Miles hadn’t been open or loving with either him or his mother throughout their lives, they were still family, and they were still gone.
“My lord, if you don’t mind, I’d like to settle Lady Kilrea for the night,” the nurse spoke behind Christian.
Christian drew in a breath and stood. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Nurse Brannaugh.”
He bent to kiss his mother’s cheek, closing his eyes and saying a quick prayer for her, then straightened and backed away. For a few moments, he stood near the doorway, watching the nurse tend to his mother, but the sight pierced him with even more guilt. His actions were what had landed his mother in the state she was in now, after all.
He gave up watching and turned to leave, striding down the hall toward his bedroom in the other wing of the house. As he walked, he unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat, loosened his tie, and tugged his shirt out of his trousers. By the time he reached his own room, shut the door, locked behind him, and lit a lamp, all it took was a few quick movements to toss his clothes aside. He sat in the chair by the empty fireplace to remove his shoes, then kicked off his trousers and drawers as well.
Once naked, he stood and crossed to his bedside table, where a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the night before still sat. He grabbed it and pulled out the cork with his teeth—like he used to do with any wine or spirits bottle that reached his hands while carousing his way through Europe—and tossed the cork on the table. He took a long draught that seared his throat and made him cough before wondering whether drowning his sorrows was really the best idea. At least the whiskey warmed his insides, which had felt numb since the accident.
He took one more swig before setting the bottle down and crossing back through his room to pick up the clothes he’d carelessly shed. There was no point in making more work for the poor sod who’d decided to be his valet. He didn’t need a valet, but Gordon had worked for his father for years, and Christian felt yet another shade of guilt over the idea of sacking the man.
He’d gathered all of his clothes and tossed them into a hamper in his wardrobe when a sharp knocking made him jerk and whip toward the door, his brow shooting up. The knocking hadn’t come from the door, though. After a second knock, he whipped the other way, only to discover it’d come from the window.
It was dark and dreary outside, and he’d only lit the one lamp. Even so, he could clearly make out the form of Marie on the other side of one of his bedroom windows. He gaped at her as he hurried across the room to unlatch the window and thrust it up.
“What in God’s name are you doing, woman? And how did you get up here?” he demanded. His heart ricocheted around his chest, and he couldn’t decide if he was happy to see her, shocked that she was at his window, or furious with her for being there in the first place.
“My, my,” she said, her wide eyes sweeping his naked form. “You do like to walk about in the altogether, don’t you, Lord Kilrea?”
The urge to laugh bubbled up in him so quickly that the effort to suppress that laughter made him dizzy. “A gentleman can walk about naked in his own bedroom,” he said, then rushed on to, “How did you know which room was mine, and for God’s sake, what are you doing on that ladder?”
“You’re answering your own questions, you know,” Marie told him, pushing him back and climbing up the last few rungs of the ladder that she’d brought from heaven only knew where to reach his window.
She hoisted her leg gracelessly over his windowsill and pulled herself into the room. At the same time that she reached for him, probably to steady herself, Christian stepped back, intent on giving her the room she needed to climb in. The result was that she lost her balance with a muffled shriek and tumbled to the floor, arms and legs sprawled. She groaned, though Christian couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or injury.
“What sort of hellion brings a ladder to an earl’s house and climbs through his window in the middle of the night?” Christian asked, finding her shoulders in the tangle of skirts and limbs and hefting her to her feet.
“A wicked one,” Marie answered, meeting his eyes with a fiery look. “And it’s not the middle of the night. It’s barely ten o’clock. There are parties throughout the county that are only just beginning at this hour.”
“Parties you should be attending rather than being here.” Christian knew that he should turn her around and push her toward the window so she could climb out again and be on her way. At the very least, he should take his hands off her and step back. He couldn’t seem to do either, though. All he could manage was to hold her and rake her with a gaze.
She returned that assessing, head-to-toe gaze, and she had far more to look at than he did. Her mouth twitched up in one corner. “You truly are the nakedest man I’ve ever known,” she said.
“What are you doing here, Marie?” he asked before her mischievous humor could trick him out of all the guilt and sorrow he should rightfully be feeling.
“I’m here to save several lives,” she said with a triumphant grin. For a moment, she rested her hands on his arms, then moved them to his sides, then quickly slid them to his chest, leaving tendrils of desire pulsing through him. A heartbeat after that, she pulled her hands away entirely and stepped away from him. “I’ve no idea where to put my hands, and I cannot think at all with them anywhe
re on your body,” she said, deliberately turning to one side. “I cannot look at you either.” As soon as she said that, she cheated her eyes back to him, focusing on his cock—which wasn’t as flaccid as it should have been. “Strike that. I cannot help but look at you,” she went on, her lips twitching into a saucy grin. A grin that she instantly stifled. “No, it’s best if I avert my eyes.”
She turned fully away from him.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Christian said. He put on as stern an expression as he could manage, but his heart overflowed and excited energy coursed through him, whether he wanted it to or not. He considered going to his wardrobe to fetch a robe, but stubborn pride kept him glued to his spot. At least, he hoped it was stubborn pride and not a far cheekier sort of satisfaction that came from knowing she liked the look of him. Or that he enjoyed how it felt to have her look.
Marie tensed for a moment before letting that tension out with a breath as she turned to him. “You cannot marry Lady Aoife. She doesn’t love you. She loves Lord Garvagh instead. And you love me.” She paused, but before he could launch into an explanation of why none of that mattered, she added, “And I love you.”
Those words hit him far harder than Christian anticipated. Marie loved him. Of course, he knew she loved him, but to hear her say it, plainly and honestly, was like an arrow piercing his heart. Except, instead of taking his life away, that arrow infused him with life and purpose.
He didn’t dare entertain those feelings, though.
“Love is inconvenient at the moment,” he said, gesturing helplessly. He must have looked especially helpless, saying as much while stark naked and on display for her. “I’m terribly sorry that Lady Aoife’s heart longs for someone else, but—”